deeply absorbing. He was remarkable in his capacity to follow this
opening of his own insignificance. It had been slow coming, but
ruthlessly now, he traced his way back from one breach to another, and
finally to that night in the plaza at Alphonso, when he had been
enabled to see service from a unique and winning angle, through the
pack-train cook. That was the key to his catching on; that, and his boy
ideals of war had lifted his copy from the commonplace. He remembered
Bedient in China, in Japan, and in his own house--how grudgingly he had
appeared in his working hours. He felt like an office-boy who has made
some pert answer to an employer too big and kind to notice. Now and
then up the years, certain warm thoughts had come to him from those
island nights, but he had forgotten their importance in gaining his
so-called standing.

Andrew Bedient was nothing like the man he had expected to find. He
remembered now that he might have looked for these rare elements of
character, since the boyhood talks had promised them, and power had
emanated from them.... Still, Bedient had grown marvellously, in
strange, deep ways. Cairns could not fathom them all, but he realized
that nothing better could happen to him than to study this man. Indeed,
his mind was fascinated in following the rich leads of his friend's
resources. He consoled himself for his shortcomings with the thought
that, at least, he was ready to see....

They talked as of old, far into the night. Cairns found himself
endeavoring with a swift, nervous eagerness to show his _best_ to
Andrew Bedient, and to be judged by that best. He spoke of none of the
achievements which the world granted to be his; instead, the little
byway humanities were called forth, for the other to hear--buds of
thought and action, which other pressures had kept from fertilizing
into seed--the very things he would have delighted in relating to a
dear, wise woman. Something about Bedient called them forth, and Cairns
fell into new depths. "I thought it was pure sex-challenge which made a
man bring these things to a woman." (This is the way he developed the
idea afterward.) "But that can't be all, since I unfolded so to
Bedient.... He has me going in all directions like a steam-shovel."

Cairns was arranging a little party for his friend. In the meantime,
his productive quantity sank from torrent to trickle. His secretary,
who knew the processes of the writer's mind as the keys of his machine